This is a graphic novel adaptation of The Little Prince. Joann Sfar is french and has drawn over one hundred books. I especially loved his graphic novThis is a graphic novel adaptation of The Little Prince. Joann Sfar is french and has drawn over one hundred books. I especially loved his graphic novel, The Rabbi's Cat about a cat that eats a parrot and then can talk. The Little Prince is translated from French into English by Sarah Ardizzone.

Joann Sfar's drawings are vibrant. They are very good at showing emotion. I like the flow of how he draws the characters in the story. The colorist Brigitte Findaklay uses lots of earth tones mixed with some very deep reds, sky blues, and bright greens. The characters have a lot more color than the backgrounds which makes them stand out.

The panel layout is two columns of three panels. This is very easy to follow. The lettering has a neat, small hand drawn quality to it. The characters have a slightly exaggerated faces with bigger eyes, ears and some fantastic qualities, especially for the flower people.

The Little Prince has a surprising amount of philosophical depth for a childrens story. Joann Sfar successfully translates the writing which is often very surreal into clear, beautiful pictures.

I especially like the drawings of the Little Prince talking to flowers, the fox, and the snake. Each character the prince talks to has a seemingly simple philosophical message.

This is worth reading, especially if you like fairytales or fables. The novel, The Little Prince is a childrens classic ...more

**spoiler alert** I am Legend by Richard Matheson is a classic vampire novel. It was originally c1954, Richard Matheson renewed the copyright. It has**spoiler alert** I am Legend by Richard Matheson is a classic vampire novel. It was originally c1954, Richard Matheson renewed the copyright. It has a very different feel from when I first read the horror novel. I think the novel is really written for someone in their late twenties. It had a lot more impact for me then.

The darkness wasn't there for me this time. It was more of a description of a horrible experience for the main character, Robert Neville. The story is more about the main character than the vampires. The world has pretty much ended for the human race. A terrible plague has spread across the world turning the population of humans into the undead.

Robert Neville is the last man on earth. He survives by living in a world fortified against the vampires outside.

Every day he goes out and stakes the living dead around his property. For me this no longer scary because they are just dead bodies to be searched for. We also learn because of a plot device he is immune to the vampires bite. One time he had been bitten by a vampire bat while he was in the army. This is an entertaining gimmick more than anything else. It lalso means he can be bitten and torn at without turning into a vampire.

The dog dies in the novel, apparently, the dog doesn't die in the movie starring Wil Smith. An interesting note about the book is that the character is a tall, muscular, blue eyed, blond haired man. But, this doesn't matter because as you are reading the novel, you can see the character as an every man. The main characters physical description seems incidental.

I've also read quite a few more vampire and zombie novels. The plot by this time has spread to numerous other novels and films. World War Z by Max Brooks is another story about a horrible plague, this time it is not vampires but zombies. Also, 28 Days, the film is about a plague that turns people into raving killers. The vampire as plague story started with this novel. The novel was very original for its time.

The vampire as plague is an interesting idea. I rather like how the book ends. This is a spoiler. Survivors who have come up with a partial cure find Robert Neville and execute him. He is a legend, the last man of the old earth. I am sure this is nothing like the new Wil Smith film even if I haven't seen it. I did see the Omega Man, an earlier version of I am Legend on the screen. In the Omega Man, Robert Neville finds a cure for the plague. I like the partial cure idea, it is much scarier and more grotesque.

I like how Robert Neville survives. He listens to classical music and he drinks. If you read carefully, you realize some of the music being described is atonal classical music. It is meant to disrupt ones emotions. The liquor he drinks is strong, scotch mainly. Scotch is a pretty sophisticaed drink

The library is of course a central motif of the book. Robert Neville searches the library, now covered with dust for books on physiology and the circulatory system. The author uses the books as a plot device to explain how the plague spread.

Robert Neville ponders the plague and the classical vampire motifs, garlic, the cross, running water, stakes, immunity to bullets. The author doesn't fully explain how or why these things work completely. He does give just enough to tantalize you, but not enough to finish the complete idea.

For a vampire novel, the writing is quite complex. It has a very detailed quality to it and misses very little of what is important. It is clear when reading the novel, the author thought things through very carefully when he wrote the novel. It is detailed enough that he gives specific dates for when things happened, chemical descriptions, and percentages. These of course aren't that important because the novel could just as well have been set today as thirty years ago. Yet, they do give a finished feeling to the writing.

Stephen King and many horror writers consider this novel to be one of the top horror stories ever written. The novel is short only 170 pages long allowing one to read it in one sitting.

There is an element of unbelievability to the novel. The author even comments that he doesn't understand why the vampires with a tiny bit of intelligence don't just burn the main characters house down to get rid of him. They throw stones at his house. But, then the novel would end. He has to be caught as an individual for the novel to end.

I am wondering what the sound track of I am Legend will be like. I hope they include some decent piano music.

I remember watching Nosferatu in the park on a summer evening at around six o'clock. You paid for your ticket and sat outside. Maybe you got a glass of beer or soda, or some popcorn. Then the piano would start playing. The film was a silent black and white with a slightly grainy texture. Nosferatu had a dreamlike quality much like animation. Everything was either very dark or very light. The whole movie was a movie of extremes.

I am reviewing this book particularly because the movie is in the theater now. I am not going to go see the movie in the theater. I will wait until it comes out on DVD. Right now, I am posting this review well after when the movie came out....more

**spoiler alert** This is the first novel released after Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's death in 2008. It includes a lot of strong political and philosophic**spoiler alert** This is the first novel released after Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's death in 2008. It includes a lot of strong political and philosophical statements about the Soviet Union, especially an indictment of the atomic bomb and the prison system in the old Soviet Union. This is a much stronger political statement than his earlier works, One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago.

In The First Circle refers to the first circle of hell where the virtuous pagans go in Dante's inferno. The setting is in a sharaska, a minimum security prison for engineers, intellectuals, and other political undesirables. Here the prisoners work 12 hours a day making things for the state like listening devices, torpedoes, and other things. It is a place on the edge where forbidden ideas can be explored.

The book mostly plods along telling the life of the prisoners, the guards, and the bureaucrats who created the prison. The story stretches outside of the prison to include the prisoners wives and lovers as well as the creators of the whole Soviet system.

Stalin is one of the main characters. Every few chapters the lead characters change. The author is trying to create a sweeping drama over the 740 pages of the novel. Stalin as a character is superbly frightening. He demonstrates fear, paranoia, and ambition at its fullest capacity. Solzhenitsyn is at his best in this novel when he is describing bureaucratic terror or black comedic irony.

There is a short story, The Buddha's Smile about Eleanor Roosevelt visiting a high security prison. It describes how the guards prepare the prisoners. The story is a reflection on how the Soviet system attempted to create a false picture of well being to the world. Every bit of the novel drips contradiction.

This contradiction is best reflected in the prisoners arguments with each other about ideas; communism, capitalism, imperialism, the church and other ideas are discussed freely inside where they cannot be discussed outside because of fear of going to prison. The prisoners also read novels that are a reflection on the novel. The Man In The Iron Mask, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy are mentioned.

There is a definite sense of right and wrong throughout the novel. This is an example of Russian realism. There is clear good and evil. Added to this sense of evil is a spattering of mysticism. A prisoner is trying to the paint the castle of the holy grail, the mathematicians attempting to make a listening device are referred to as rosicrucians, and there is a sad visit to the remnants of a Russian orthodox church.

Most of In The First Circle is steady excellent craftsmanship. I wondered at points about the translation; whether the translator needed to pick better wording. However, at moments the writing becomes sublime espcially when the author is describing irony or bureaucratic terror. This novel reflects on the darkness in the human heart and the ability to live with the impossible. It is filled with deep intellectual thought and is slow going. If you want to read a complex novel in the traditional Russian style you will like this. ...more